Photo Courtesy of Ken L. Hagler
Desolation
If I could go back to tell myself something about what was to come, I do not know if I would have believed me. Nothing, and I mean nothing, would have helped and nothing would have done the job to prepare me for the moment when my wife would take her last breath on this planet.
Do not believe it when someone says they know. Even those who have experienced the “technical” same thing (me talking to someone who also lost a spouse to cancer) do not know what I experienced nor what I am experiencing now. There are similarities which allow us to support one another but it is not the same. I would never have believed it possible that walking in the valley of the shadow of suck could be worse.
I was wrong. Oh. My. God. I was wrong.
I was not prepared for how I would feel. I was not prepared for my children’s responses. I was not prepared for what it would be like to go home, to an emptiness and hollowness. I was not prepared for the sounds of the stairs which I hoped would be the sound of her coming down. I was not prepared for her empty space at the table. I was not prepared for all the pictures and the memories they would bring up.
I was not prepared for the truth. I thought I knew and I was wrong.
You are wrong too. Whatever you think you know about how you will handle a tragic death, will not help. For all I had read and prayed and talked and prepared for that moment, it was not enough. It could not be. Half of me was ripped from my life. For all my bravado, I was not an island. Twenty-one years ago, when I said “I do,” I committed completely to the role of being Heather’s husband. I must have done something right because I am missing me.
If you read my blog right before Heather died about how I read “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,” to her, you know C.S. Lewis was one of her favorite author. Lewis wrote two books on pain: “The Problem of Pain,” and “A Grief Observed.” The first is good theology. The second is real life. It is Lewis’ struggle with his wife’s death. I started reading it again and in Madeleine L’Engle’s intro from 1988, she wrote what I need to say to you today:
“But where Joy Davidman [Lewis' wife] is now, or where my husband is, no priest, no minister, no theologian can put into the limited terms of provable fact. ‘Don’t talk to me about the consolations of religion,’ Lewis writes, ‘or I shall suspect that you do not understand.’”
In my experience here in the valley of suck, I have discovered it does suck out the consolations which I once knew regarding my faith; my religion...all of them. The genie is out of the bottle and you cannot put him back in. We are not immortal. Our love, no matter how strong, is not enough to prevent the one we love most from dying. Remember, Lazarus, though raised from the dead, died again.
We do not understand death. I do not think for all our poetry and prose regarding love, that we understand it either. And I truly do not understand the ways of God. Death rips apart the past, the present, and the future.
As I blog tonight, I know very few things anymore but I know these things:
- I loved Heather with my whole being (and I hope I made her glad she married me).
- Everyday I woke up, I loved her. I still do.
- Her favorite job title in the world was “mom.”
- I have no idea what I am doing now and only a fool would brag they did.
- I am scared how to parent my two new adults (death graduates you early).
- I know enough that though I may be at odds with God, God is the only one I’ve got.
I also know there is no way around the valley of suck and I find it has given me much strength to name it and call it out for what it is and what it does to us. There is no way to talk about consolations without the despair of lamentation and knowing deep grief. We must live and know what the writer of Lamentations says in the first half of the book before we can talk about what comes next...
1 I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
2he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.
4He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
5 he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
6 he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
8though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
9 he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked.
(Lamentations 3:1-9)
If you are grieving, know this, you don’t get to skip ahead to the end of the book or the end of the valley no matter what you may think or want to do. If you are with the grieving, do not try to console the grieving by belittling them as they grieve with talk of glorious days ahead. The food of the valley of suck is the gravel we tread. We run head first into blocks of stone you cannot move for us. Walk with us at your own peril but if you do, just walk.
Much love from the valley of suck.
Photo Courtesy of Ken Hagler
Ken and Heather Hagler
The Rev. Ken Hagler and his wife Heather
The Rev. Ken L. Hagler is a United Methodist pastor in the North Georgia Annual Conference. He blogs at Jedi Pastor Ken, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.